What seems like a different lifetime ago, I was lucky enough to run a session on participatory grant making (PGM) at the #LosingControl conference, which brought together funders, commissioners, activists and those from the not-for profit sector to explore different approaches to funding movement building.
After a bit of an overview from myself and an example from the Edge Fund about how they work, we had a collective conversation to explore what the sticking points and challenges were in terms of embedding PGM approaches in our organisations. The mix of people in the room provided some invaluable insight and challenge from a range of viewpoints, including those trying to test or embed this approach in foundations, those who were working in this way but might not be linked up to others, and those who could/would be the applicants and grant holders in a process like this.
We explored what the blockers and enablers were in different stages of a PGM process, as well as recommendations for what we could be doing to get us thinking about and overcoming the obstacles in order to make PGM a reality. Below is the captures conversation:
The Before — planning and thinking phase
What’s stopping us?
- Not having the right structures in place in our organisations — they are too rigid.
- Reputational risk and fear of giving up power.
- Organisational culture that doesn’t support the approach.
- Governing rules, regulations and legal complications, and not being clear what these are.
- Coming up against unknown blockers, e.g. not knowing what the issues for our boards will be.
- Self-sabotage — assuming others in the organisation will be a blocker before we know if this is the case.
What’s enabling us?
- Asset-based community development approaches.
- Listening and learning from communities and our organisation.
- Testing and piloting programmes in our organisations.
- Sharing case studies and best practices.
- Working openly — sharing what we are doing well and not so well.
- Having very clear drivers for why we are choosing to use PGM.
What can we do?
- Understand what the ‘right’ structures look like.
- Define what success looks like — what are we trying to achieve and why?
- Share examples of where governance structures support this work.
- Share our learning and failures.
- Plan — think about what evaluation looks like, and what training and skills you will need right at the beginning.
- Understand the concerns in our own organisations — what are people are worried about?
- Find out what the parameters we are working within are — what are the red lines and the processes for sign-off?
The Beginning — design and sign-off phase
What’s stopping us?
- Not understanding the sign-off processes in our organisations.
- Not knowing the blockers on a board — is it one person, the language used, class composition or risk aversion?
- Donors not being brought into the process and therefore unsure about it.
- The process to get stuff changed is opaque and confusing.
- A culture that isn’t open to change or new processes.
- Getting funders to think about the problematic nature of philanthropic structures and narratives is hard.
- Not enough time and headspace to do this work properly.
What’s enabling us?
- Understanding how to influence internal governance and processes.
- Understanding which organisations can and should participate in the design — budget to pay non-funders for their time and expertise.
- Having relationships with those in an organisation who can help you navigate your sign-off processes.
- Having clear, robust evidence and examples of this working well.
- If designing the process with those outside of your organisation, understanding that this is a mutual relationship — not assuming that organisations want to work with funders but developing with them what the process should be and how it should work.
- Setting clear expectations and remits so that people know what you can do collectively.
- Tools and techniques from other areas such as service user design, co-production, co-design, community organising, and consensus decision making.
What can we do?
- Do some stakeholder mapping — who should be involved, when and how?
- Start conversations internally — look to map what the process is, what the decision points are and who controls these.
- Have examples and narratives of what the process could look like — enable people to see and experience this through shadowing/observing others working in this way.
- Lift up the voices of those challenging and critiquing philanthropy, e.g. #charitysowhite and Decolonising Philanthropy by Edgar Villanueva.
- Develop a coalition of the willing — connect people who are trying to work in this space to develop mutual support and challenge.
- Work with consultants with experience of movements and service design to help design funding.
- Plan — build in time to understand what we are trying to do and why.
- Understand what model works for what you are trying to do rather than just the most commonly used model.
- Understand the skills gaps and explore ways of filling this through training, recruitment and/or consultancy.
The Middle — delivery phase
What’s stopping us
Within this section there were less named blockers from funders. This could be for a number of reasons, such as once you’ve got past the sign-off stage the blockers are less, or that many of the people in the room were stuck at the ‘before’ and ‘beginning’ stages rather than the delivery of PGM, so weren’t aware of the blockers they might face as they progress.
There were, however, more blockers that were identified by people and organisations who would likely to be invited by funders to participate as decision makers or peer reviewers. These blockers centred around two aspects, the first that organisations could not afford to participate in the process, taking time out of their work or taking unpaid leave in order to, ultimately, do a favour for a funder. The second was the assumption by funders that organisation and or people would want to do so and should be grateful for the opportunity to be invited into the room. The truth is that for many to be involved in a process like this involves a large time commitment that they do not have, on top of feeling like they might be penalised for rejecting an opportunity or that their involvement is tokenistic and not meaningful.
Understanding these issues and unpicking them enables funders to have a more realistic understanding of what is being asked of whom, and the implications for an organisation of accepting the opportunity to be involved.
What’s enabling us?
- Sharing the difference and impact of PGM approaches with others.
- Developing a proportional approach to the grant size.
- Reflecting on what we have learnt through the process.
- Building an understanding of consensus decision making and existing dynamics among decision making partners.
- Thinking about the operational budget that allows you to deliver this, e.g. budgeting for facilitator fees, travel costs, accommodation, room hire, food and paying participants.
What can we do?
- Share what we are learning — challenges and successes.
- Bring in people who have facilitation skills or develop this within your organisation.
- Budget for operational costs (e.g. paying participants and delivery of the decision making) rather than just the grant budget.
- Develop open and honest relationships with decision makers about what is involved — how much work and time will be needed, what the process is, what is within their gift to decide and what is outside of this, and how much they will be paid. Recognise the power dynamics involved in this and give people the flexibility to engage or not depending on their needs, not yours.
The Learning — hopefully it’s not the end!
What’s stopping us
- Not valuing learning.
- Not building in the time and capacity to reflect, learn and adapt.
- Being moved on to the next project before you can explore the learning from the last.
- Falling into traditional grant management approaches without exploring how this can also look and feel different.
- Asking for long reports that no one likes writing or reading.
What’s enabling us?
- Celebrating successes and the differences we have made.
- Having a plan or action for learning embedded from the outset — build this into budgets and timeframes.
- Using different approaches to reporting and monitoring — look at what enables us to recognise success, lessons learnt and progress e.g. case studies, videos, presentations, art, top 10 tips and learning journals.
- Exploring approaches that provide collective accountability and sharing between grant holders.
- Being able to recognise that feedback is the breakfast of champions and should be welcomed.
- Viewing this process as a learning cycle. Learning from all aspects of the process from design to delivery, and from decision making to the grant holders’ work — all of this provides insights on different areas to improve.
What can we do?
- Feel comfortable and support each other to share what has gone wrong as well as what has gone right — be a role model in doing this.
- Be deliberative and collaborative in developing and designing our learning and support for grant holders.
- Collect and build on feedback from everyone involved and implement the suggestions in the next round.
- Be flexible and responsive to feedback, adapting what we are doing and will do next time.
- Be proactive in seeking out feedback — provide an intermediary so that grant holders and participants feel they can be open and honest about their experiences.
This session was an exciting opportunity to understand where others were at and share in an honest and open space what challenges we face and the successes we have achieved. It enabled organisations to understand what funders might be grappling with, while at the same time highlighting the experiences of those involved in the process.
As many of us test and trial PGM approaches in our work, being able to share our solutions, thinking and approaches is a good way to collectively push the sector to work more openly and collectively to problem solve rather than grapple (sometimes unsuccessfully) for change alone. This workshop and the feedback above has given me some really interesting insights into questions that we might collectively be able to answer. The one that has got me thinking, particularly for organisations who are not set up as PGM funders and are trying to move traditional funders to trial PGM approaches, is what the ‘right’ governance structures could look like, or how to use PGM within already determined governance structures. If you have insights or examples of ways in which this has worked well, please do let me know so we can begin to compile and share these.
